


Blood and Thunder

by SilenceIsGolden15



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo 2k18 [17]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Blood, Blood and Injury, Broken Bones, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Injury, Near Death Experiences, Prompt: Ambush, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Space Battles, Surgery, Worried Shiro (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 02:41:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16467149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilenceIsGolden15/pseuds/SilenceIsGolden15
Summary: They were all already tired, hurt, and fought out. Then Zarkon sneaks up on them again, and Keith gets hurt. Badly.





	Blood and Thunder

“Allura, are we clear?”

“We’re clear.”

There was the familiar stomach dropping sensation as Allura powered up the teladuv, and then they were diving into a wormhole and racing through space. Keith closed his eyes against the dizzying colors outside the windshield and slumped into his seat, breathing carefully so that he didn’t jostle his broken ribs. 

All of the Paladins were in varying stages of fucked up after that last battle. Lance had gotten off easiest, having been sniping from a distance, and bore only some bruises and scrapes that wouldn’t require any pod time. Pidge had been causing electrical chaos the whole time and had the burns to prove it, dotting all over her hands. Hunk was sprawled in his chair fighting back tears-- he’d gotten his leg pinned beneath some rubble as the base they were invading had collapsed, fracturing it in more than one place. 

Shiro was wrung out and dripping blood from a cut on his temple, tingeing his white hair pink. He probably had a concussion, too. And Keith was sporting at least one broken rib, though the pain told him it was more likely several. But he was quiet, not voicing his discomfort, and when Coran asked who would like to go in the first pod Keith let them choose Hunk. 

“The Castle used an awful lot of power on the particle barrier,” Allura explained regretfully when Pidge asked why only one pod was available. “It will need to recharge for a bit before we can use more than one healing pod.”

So the others settled themselves around the room to wait. Once Hunk was set up Coran bustled around the room, bandaging up Lance and Pidge. When he got to Keith he waved him away, steering him towards Shiro, and Coran was too frazzled to question it. He’d had broken ribs before-- it wasn’t that bad. As long as he didn’t move too much he would be fine. The others came first.

He repeated that to himself as he waited to distract himself from the ache and the sting whenever he inhaled.  _ The others come first. Shiro will go in the pod next, then I’ll go. You’ve had worse. The others come first. _

Allura was still on the bridge, hopping them from wormhole to wormhole in the hopes that Zarkon wouldn’t track them down again, which he’d had the annoying habit of doing lately. Every twenty minutes or so Keith’s stomach would dip, telling him they’d entered another one, and nausea really wasn’t fun to hold down when your chest feels like it’s on fire. 

Hunk emerged from the pod after a varga. He was disoriented and drowsy, as they tended to be after a healing cycle, but he was walking on his leg fine and he said it didn’t hurt anymore, so Coran felt ready to put Shiro in. But just as he was helping the Black Paladin to his feet, an alarm began to blare.

Allura’s panicked voice echoed over the intercom, “Paladins, to your Lions! We were followed!”

Lance, Pidge, and Hunk let out a chorus of matching groans as they pulled themselves to their feet, replacing removed pieces of armor as they scuttled out of the room and back towards the hangars. 

“You should go in the pod first,” Coran was saying to Shiro, who was trying to escape his grasp. “You’re in danger of severe head trauma--”

“I’m the Black Paladin, I need to be out there with my team!”

Allura was still shouting over the intercom. Keith, taking advantage of Shiro being distracted by Coran, slowly pulled himself to his feet. Pain lanced through him when he tried to straighten up and he let out a gasp, leaning against the wall to keep himself upright. 

“Keith, Shiro, we need you out there now!”

Shiro slipped away from Coran and rushed from the room at a jog, and Keith followed, biting back his winces at every impact of his boots against the floor. 

_ It’ll be fine,  _ he told himself as he ran into Red’s hangar,  _ just a little longer. _

He was halfway up her ramp before he realized that the prickling over his skin wasn’t goosebumps from adrenaline, but rather Red’s alarm as she picked up on his pain. She let out a concerned rumble when he had to brace himself on the wall to keep from stumbling on the way to the pilot seat.

“I’m fine, Red,” he gasped aloud. “We gotta go. The others need us.”

Thankfully she didn’t fight him as he flew out of the hangar and onto the battlefield. 

The Castle was surrounded by what looked like a swarm of fighter jets, surrounding them from all sides and being deployed from a single massive gunship that they all recognized as belonging to Zarkon. Keith’s ears buzzed with the chatter in the comms; Shiro asking Allura if the Castle could hold up if they focused on the gunship, Lance and Hunk and Pidge calling out enemy positions to each other. Keith put himself on auto pilot, blindly attacking anything that moved in front of his Lion. 

“Keith,” Lance suddenly shouted, making him jolt and cry out just a bit at the surge of pain, “Incoming on your nine!”

He didn’t react quickly enough. The fighter slammed into Red, sending the Lion into a tailspin and forcing Keith’s torso hard against the armrest. Something burst into sharp pain in his chest and for a moment everything went black. 

He came to a moment later with a high-pitched keening in his ears and a head full of static. Red was rumbling in the back of his mind, trying to nudge him back to full consciousness, though the moment she succeeded the pain slammed back into him and he crumpled forward over the controls. 

“Form Voltron!” He heard dimly through his headset, and he did as he was told, coughing into his hand as the Lions pieced themselves together. His glove came away stained with red and he wiped it away on his chair. 

Flying in Voltron was no easy task on a good day, but it was ten times worse with shattered ribs. Shiro was leading them through complex turns and flips to avoid the blasts from Zarkon’s ion cannon and Keith was barely keeping up. Something was burbling up in the back of his throat, forcing him to swallow over and over in an effort to keep it down, and every movement and jostle of turbulence made his ribs scrape over each other and send shrieking pain up his spine. 

Their normal lasers weren’t doing anything, and neither was Hunk’s shoulder cannon. Eventually Shiro guided them in closer to the ship and shouted the order Keith had been dreading. 

“Form sword!”

He stretched to shove his bayard into the slot and barely kept himself from collapsing altogether. His chest was on fire, searing hotter when he tried to breathe. He opened his mouth to gasp for breath and a cough came out instead, accompanied by a flood of red liquid that poured over his chin and splattered to the floor beneath him. He choked on the copper, black spots decorating his vision and threatening to take it over. 

“Keith!”

Somehow he turned his bayard. Everything after that was a grey haze. Red must’ve taken over at some point because he was bent over, hacking up mouthfuls of blood and trembling as every cough made the pain worse. No matter how much he coughed up the blood just kept coming. He couldn’t breathe, he was drowning, and he couldn’t hear the others through the comms anymore. 

The last thing he heard was Red’s roar before everything went black. 

* * *

They’d barely disabled Zarkon’s ship when all of them had the visceral and nauseating sensation of their right arm being torn off. The others screamed at the feeling as Red pulled away from Voltron and took off for the Castle, but Shiro couldn’t make a sound. He couldn’t breathe, or move, or think; things had already been spinning and blurry before from the concussion but now he couldn’t even see the console in front of him because of the light shining in his eyes, blocked only by the unholy silhouette of druids leaning over him.

It was happening again. How could it be happening again? The arm was already gone how could they take it  _ again-- _

“--iro!” 

The crackled in his ear dragged him back to reality so quickly he nearly retched. Voltron had disbanded, and now the other three Lions hovered in front of him in concern. Red was nowhere in sight.

It was Lance shouting in his ear. “Shiro, come  _ in,  _ don’t make me get in that Lion because I  _ will,  _ god _ damnit--” _

With a great deal of effort, Shiro swallowed what had risen in his throat and sat up straight. His hands were shaking visibly, even the metal one, and he could feel the cold sweat sticking his suit to him everywhere. Unpleasant, but it grounded him enough to respond to the comms.

“I’m here. Where’s Red?”

Lance and Hunk let out sighs of relief at the sound of his voice. Pidge was the one who answered.

“She went back to the Castle. Keith isn’t answering his comms either.”

“Alright.” He switched his comms over to the Castle, having to swallow several more times before he could speak again. “Princess? We’re gonna need another wormhole-- something’s wrong with Keith. We can’t fight anymore.”

“Roger that.” Shiro tried not to hear the bitterness in that sentence. “Return to the Castle.”

They did, their Lions turning in tandem to take them back home. The moment the hangar doors closed the stomach-twisting feeling of entering a wormhole slammed into him and Shiro bent double, a hand pressed over his mouth.

He did not have time to be dizzy and sick. Something was wrong with Keith and he had to fix it.

By the time he stumbled out of Black, the other paladins were all grouped in front of Red, who was sprawled gracelessly across the hangar floor with her chin on the ground. The others were calling out to Keith, trying to get him to let them in, but Red didn’t open her jaw until Shiro approached. 

The stench of blood in the cockpit was overwhelming. He heard Hunk gag in the background and Pidge swore, but Shiro couldn’t care because Keith was on the floor in a pool of blood and he wasn’t breathing.

With a hoarse croak of the Red Paladin’s name Shiro staggered forward, falling clumsily to his knees and hauling Keith close to him without thinking. He sat him upright against his shoulder, and for a moment hope bloomed in his chest when Keith let out a gasp. But it shriveled up and died a moment later when he coughed and another splatter of red landed on Shiro’s armor.

“Shiro, we’ve gotta get him to the med bay,” Pidge was saying, and it took him entirely too long to comprehend her words. Once he did the next step was clear-- he couldn’t carry Keith there by himself.

“Hunk, help me lift him.” He didn’t look back when he said it, but he could envision Hunk’s expression when he whimpered.

“I… I can’t…”

“Hunk--”

“There’s so much blood…”

“Move!”

The other paladins scattered before the authoritative voice, allowing Allura into the cockpit. Without hesitation she scooped Keith up in her arms and turned to rush for the medbay.

Shiro didn’t remember getting to his feet or leaving the Lion, but the next time he blinked he was running through the halls of the Castle alongside Allura and opening the door to the infirmary. Coran was already there, a full tray of surgical implements laid out beside a table, medical scanner in hand. Allura set Keith down on the table as gently as she could and Shiro crowded in beside her, Coran and the Princess working to get Keith’s armor off of him while Shiro could do nothing but hold his slightly cold hand and try not to panic too much. 

That was seriously put to the test when the Princess rolled Keith’s suit down to his waist and exposed his abdomen. The entire right side of his torso, from the shoulder to the hip, was a mass of discolored, rapidly darkening bruises, and the shape was all wrong. Flattened and collapsed. As Coran waved his scanner over Keith’s body, Shiro switched the hand he was using so that he didn’t accidentally break Keith’s when his grip tightened. 

The tablet beeped. Coran’s eyes narrowed as they darted over the words.

“Quiznack,” he hissed, tossing the tablet aside and rushing for his tools. 

“What is it, Coran?” Allura asked to the backdrop of the younger paladins trying their best to keep themselves together.

“There’s fluid in his lung,” he answered as he collected tools. “It will need to be drained before we can put him in a pod.”

“I’ll do it. Just tell me where.”

Coran passed Allura a scalpel and quickly consulted his tablet again. Keith coughed, more blood bubbling in the back of his throat and for a second Shiro was dragged into another memory-- some kind of alien, flat out and prone on the Arena sand, burbling blood from where Shiro had cut his throat. He came back to himself just in time to see Allura jam the scalpel into Keith’s side.

Hunk turned away with a cry of shock, planting a hand over his mouth. Lance was frozen in horror. Pidge scampered away, seemingly looking for something. Keith didn’t react at all. 

Allura withdrew the scalpel with a squelch as Coran joined her on Keith’s right side, a length of tubing in his hands. Shiro focused on Keith’s pale, pale face while it was inserted, still like death frozen over. Pidge returned with some sort of container just in time to catch the fountain of frothy pink liquid that came pouring from the tube. 

For a moment the room was petrified in tense silence. Then Keith moved, just enough to draw in a deeper breath, and they all went weak-kneed at the same time. 

“Well then,” said Coran, drawing the back of his hand across his forehead. The palms of his white gloves were stained red. “That was quite a doozy, wasn’t it?”

Shiro couldn’t answer with his heart in his throat, but Lance nodded numbly and Allura let out a slightly hysterical chuckle. 

“When can we put him in the pod?” Pidge asked, slipping an arm between Allura and Coran to hold Keith’s other hand. Her cheeks were pale with tear streaks. 

“As soon as the draining stops.”

Shiro bent over the rest his forehead against the table. The steel was cool and soothing, but not enough to stop the shivers that were overtaking his whole body. Keith had been hurt and he hadn’t noticed-- he could’ve died. He could’ve lost Keith and it would’ve been all his fault. 

“Number Two,” Coran put a gentle hand on Shiro’s shoulder, “You should go into a pod as well.”

Shiro automatically shook his head. “No, I can’t-- I can’t leave Keith--” His voice was cracking and quite honestly pathetic, but none of them called him on it. Coran merely gave his shoulder a squeeze and a bit of a tug, indicating he should straighten up and face him.

Shiro didn’t want to, but he did anyway. 

“You’ll only be in for a varga, at the most,” he said solemnly, giving Shiro a father’s stern look. “Keith will need much longer. You’ll be out when he’s ready. I promise.”

He’d had to do a lot of hard things in his life. Choosing Kerberos over the man he loved. Fighting in Zarkon’s arena to save Matt. Not succumbing to the desire to let himself waste away after the druids took his arm. Acting like a leader despite the fact that he was one ill-placed trigger from a meltdown at any given point. But at that moment, all of those things seemed paltry compared to releasing Keith’s hand and stepping away from him. 

He did it anyway. 

* * *

Waking up from cryosleep was the worst feeling in the world, Keith decided. Ok, maybe not quite as bad as shattering half of your ribcage, but it was up there. The drowsy, disoriented feeling was no different this time from any other time and he was glad when someone caught him barely two steps out of the pod. 

Carefully, after bracing himself for the brightness of the med bay lights, Keith blinked his eyes open. 

Shiro was the one holding him up, as was expected. Behind him the whole team had gathered to watch him wake up, even the Alteans, and if he wasn’t wrong Coran’s eyes even looked the tiniest bit shiny. Lance and Pidge looked teary too, and Hunk had probably started crying the moment the pod opened. 

For a moment there was expectant silence. Then Keith cleared his scratchy throat.

“What happened?”

There was absolutely no time to brace himself for the blur of green and brown that was Pidge, slamming into his side and squeezing tight around his waist. 

“What  _ happened  _ was we had to drain blood out of your collapsed lung, you fucking  _ idiot!”  _ She was babbling and the words were angry, but her choked voice gave her away. “Don’t you ever do something like that again or I swear to god I will kill you, understand?”

He tried his best to laugh. “Yes ma’am.”

The others took that as permission to approach, and soon he was wrapped up in a group hug from the whole team. It seemed to go on forever, with Hunk trying to stop his tears and promising to make him all the food he wanted, and Lance making weak, light-hearted jokes through a watery smile, and Pidge swearing up a storm. Allura and Coran were quieter, though the latter ruffled his hair affectionately and the former whispered that she was glad he was alright. 

“Alright, alright,” Shiro said in mock-scolding after some time, “That’s enough. Let him go, he probably wants to shower and get dressed.”

“Yes please,” responded Keith. The pods always left him feeling kind of grimy, like there was a layer of film over his skin, and he wanted it off as soon as possible. One by one the others acquiesced and left the room, Hunk insisting he was going to make him something to eat and Lance muttering something about a nap. Leaving him alone with Shiro. 

The next thing he knew Keith was swept up into an even tighter hug, Shiro squeezing him so tightly he thought he might crack his ribs all over again. His human hand lightly ran through Keith’s hair, so gently, and the whole thing had an aura of… desperation, almost.

“Sh-Shiro?”

“Sorry,” Shiro huffed, loosening his hold a bit but not letting go. “I just… I thought I’d lost you,  _ otouto.” _

Keith curled his hands into the shoulders of Shiro’s shirt. “Was it really that bad?”

“Yeah. It was.”

He took a deep breath, relieved when his lungs expanded all the way and it didn’t hurt. “I’m sorry.”

Shiro’s fingers rubbed at the nape of his neck. “Don’t hide injuries, Keith. It only makes things worse.”

“But Hunk--”

“Who deserves help first isn’t your call to make.” Shiro’s voice was stern. He pulled back a bit to look Keith in the eyes and he could see every line, every shadow, every minute of the hours Shiro undoubtedly spent waiting for the pod to open. “If you get hurt, I want you to tell me. Ok?”

Casting his eyes away, Keith nodded. Shiro sighed and hugged him again. 

“Ok. Let’s go get you cleaned up.”


End file.
